Just a quiet evening for a conductor...

Working, visiting official offices, packing, blogging, phoning clients and drawing dinosaurs, all got a bit too much for me today, so I took the evening off. Well sort of, I just did something different. I got out the sewing machine and gave myself an hour to produce a dinosaur puppet (none to be found in town) and then I put on my high heels, lipstick and scent, brushed my hair, also a new necessity as it is longer than it used to be, and I took myself out to eat.

I walked 188 paces to the corner of the next street, to Café Fatal. This was my first visit, can you believe it? It is almost an extension of my living room and I had not been there once in the six months that I have lived in the city. I even have a gift token for a meal there given to me for the birthday that didn’t get celebrated last summer. Now was the time to spend it.

I nearly didn’t make it because the hour that I had given myself to produce a dinosaur turned into ninety minutes, as the machine played up. I bought this sewing machine in 1990 in Budapest, when the new Singer shop opened at the junction of the Korut and Ullöi ut. It is feeling old and weary and is a bit tempremental. It is allowed to play up sometimes but not this week, please!

So with the sewing machine fixed but the dino still unfinished, I flung on the high heels and thick winter coat and threw myself out of the house, braving the "minus zero" temperatures for this short walk. As I left the house I noticed this week’s Time magazine was poking out of my letterbox so that came along for food too.

While waiting for my food I sketched the café and the people in it. Then as I find it is difficult to sketch while holding a knife and fork while I eat, I read instead. I thought that I had gone out to get away from computers and blogging and work and there it all was again staring me in the face from Time Magazine. As I always read magazines and newspapers starting at the back (not for the sports news, it is a habit I picked up from my Mum) I read first the back page essay by Michael Kinsley entitled "Too much information: how many blogs does the world really need?”

Exactly what I was thinking yesterday.

The more blogs I find about Conductive Education the more difficult it is too keep up, and it is really important for me to decide where my priorities are, writing my own or reading other people’s.

Michael Kinsley says… "Now everyone has a blog. The opportunity for us all to express an opinion is wonderful. Having to read all those opinions is not.”

Well I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that but I am finding it necessary to be choosy about what I read, otherwise time flies and I don’t get to write my own blog postings or finish my dinosaurs!

Michael Kinsley’s closing sentence was that he feels many blog readers may be reaching the stage that he reached years ago with the Sunday New York Times Magazine – actively hoping that there isn’t anything interesting in there because then he would have to take time to read it.

Yes, this is getting to be the case with me and blogs this week, no time to read them, no time to write them, and at the same time go to work, go to dentist, pack cases, sew dinosaurs and eat!
Which is why I abandoned everything for two whole hours and sat, all dolled up, in the local Café Fatal, and still ended up with at least one new posting!

A picture of the dino puppet will be here tomorrow, when he will have two big eyes to look at the camera through, and legs to stand on!


Notes

Café Fatal
http://gastronomie.nordbayern.de/gastro_ausgabe.asp?gastro_id=1152

www.time.com
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1860888,00.html